Archived: RoC Private Clinic Limited

Updated 21 September 2022

RoC Private Clinic Limited was established in 2010 and provides face-to-face, remote and home visiting GP services for children and adults. Services include blood tests, cervical screening, allergy testing, and travel and childhood immunisations.

The provider is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for the regulated activities of Treatment of Disease, Disorder or Injury, Diagnostic & Screening Procedures.

The day-to-day running of the service is supported remotely by RoC Private Clinic Limited (Aberdeen branch) with on presence of the London based Registered Manager that is also the Lead GP. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run. The overall running of the whole service (London and Aberdeen) is overseen by RoC Private Clinic LTD founder and CEO.

This inspection was of the London branch of RoC Private Clinic Limited that is one of two branches; the other, larger branch, is based in Aberdeen in Scotland. The service is open Monday and Friday 10am to 2pm, and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 9:30am to 5pm and sees up to 50 general practice patients per month.

RoC Private Clinic Limited (London) shares its systems and processes with the Aberdeen branch where most non-clinical services are outsourced to including HR, and accounting and marketing functions. At the time of our inspection the provider’s IT patient information system had experienced a major outage for several weeks, staff were using a combination of backup IT and paper recording to sustain services to its patients in line with the provider’s business continuity plans.

RoC Private Clinic Limited (London) is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some general exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of service and these are set out in Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Occupational health services are provided to approximately 60% of patients at RoC Private Clinic Limited (London) under arrangements made by their employer, a government department or an insurance company. These types of arrangements are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, we were only able to inspect the services which are provided to approximately 40% of the service’s patients and are not arranged for patients by their employers, a government department or an insurance company.

RoC Private Clinic Limited (London) employs a temporary receptionist and long-term locum GP. In addition, there is one cardiology consultant who works under practising privileges (the granting of practising privileges is a well-established process within independent healthcare whereby a medical practitioner is granted permission to work in an independent hospital or clinic, in independent private practice, or within the provision of community services).

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Gathering information through staff interviews on site and through video conferencing.
• Completing clinical records reviews and discussing findings with the provider.
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• A site visit.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 21 September 2022

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at RoC Private Clinic Limited (the London location) on 31 August 2022 as part of our inspection programme. The service provides online and in-person General Practice (GP) consultations for adults and children including travel immunisations.

RoC Private Clinic Limited (the London location) was also previously inspected in February 2019 and was found to be providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led care and treatment.

Our key findings were:

• The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The practice organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs.
• The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review and improve arrangements to consider DBS checks, including for temporary non-clinical staff.
• Review and improve systems to monitor and improve the quality of clinical care.
• Undertake a risk assessment to ensure appropriate medicines are held for the patient cohort in the event of a medical emergency.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services